[illumos-Developer] Is it time to get rid of "lp"? (was ... 1224 -- strconst fixes...)

[Gary Mills]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 10:11:54PM -0400, Gordon Ross wrote:
> >
> > However, the changes in the lp stuff lead me to ask,
> > Is it time to just push the lp stuff off a cliff?
> > We have CUPS, after all.
> 
> Does anyone use the lp stuff anymore?
> If so why?  (and why not CUPS?)

At work, we have a print spooler for about 80 printers running `lp'
under Solaris 9.  To configure print clients, we just install a custom
copy of /etc/printers.conf and it's done.  Our Linux people tell me
that they have to configure each CUPS print client manually and
individually because there's no way to automate the process.  If this
is true, it's certainly a disadvantage of CUPS for large
installations.

This summer I'll be replacing it with a print spooler that supports
both IPP and BSD print protocols.  I'm hoping that this will make
things easier for CUPS print clients.

Maybe nobody uses central spoolers anymore.  Maybe they print directly
to printers instead.  Maybe each workstation only prints to the
printer sitting on the same desktop.

-- 
-Gary Mills-        -Unix Group-        -Computer and Network Services-